Not Applicable.
Not Applicable.
This invention relates to a stand for maintaining a cut tree in a vertical position and more specifically to a Christmas tree stand.
Tree stands are known in the relevant art, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,195,715 (Cone) to the present inventor and assignee (Mitchell.) Desirable features of a tree stand are low cost; ease of assembling a tree in the stand in a vertical position, even an imperfect tree with an asymmetric and crooked tree trunk; stability, both in having a sufficient footprint to prevent tipping of the tree, and in providing a gripping force on the tree trunk sufficient to retain the tree in the desired position and; provision to maintain the tree bottom immersed in a liquid reservoir of water or water-preservative mixture, to minimize degradation of the tree. It is further desirable that the liquid reservoir be large enough so it only requires replenishment on an infrequent basis.
Some relevant art references establish the grip on a tree trunk by a mechanical mechanism that uses a device that is manually tightened at initial installation. There are numerous examples of such stands, U.S. Pat. No. 4,913,395 (Juhas), U.S. Pat. No. 5,114,113 (Krinner), U.S. Pat. No. 5,249,772 (Montle), U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,808 (Roy), U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,444 (Murray), U.S. Pat. No. 5,467,959 (Behringer), U.S. Pat. No. 5,779,215 (DeMasi) and U.S. Pat. No. 6,129,325 (Niklas) provide recent examples illustrating the complexity and resulting high cost of such mechanisms. Most of these mechanisms are inconvenient because they require the tree installer to tighten the stand mechanism with the tree lying horizontal, or the installer must lie under the tree when in the vertical position to tighten it. Neither of these options allows the installer to view the tree to assure it is vertical.
One reference U.S. Pat. No. 5,375,808 (Roy) has provision for adjusting the tree and then tightening the stand mechanism while standing beside the tree but this mechanism requires the tree installer to exert considerable downward force on the operating mechanism at a location adjacent to the tree trunk. This is a difficult action to perform if the tree has substantial lower branches near the bottom of the trunk.
An improvement to mechanisms requiring tightening at initial installation is to use the weight of the tree to provide the grip on the tree trunk, and design the mechanism so the gripping force is always present as long as the tree is in the stand. Stands with this type of mechanism allow the tree angle to be adjusted by lifting on the tree to release the gripping force, adjust the angle and then lower the tree. U.S. Pat. No. 2,464,593 (Lorenzen) describes a tree holder in which the tree weight rests on a spring-supported conical cup. The motion of the cup due to the tree weight causes knife-edge gripping blades to grip and support the tree trunk. U.S. Pat. No. 2,592,561 (Greenwood) describes a stand in which the tree weight is supported on movable jaws that rotate to grip the tree trunk when the tree is installed in the stand. U.S. Pat. No. 3,301,512 (Nyberg) shows a stand in which the weight of the inserted tree acts through a lever mechanism to grip the tree trunk with several clamps. U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,901 (Mancini) shows a stand in which the weight of the tree in a central reservoir causes three legs to pivot and cause their upper, clamping collars to grip the tree. This stand uses a three-point support using narrow legs, which is not as stable as a circular, flat-bottomed stand, and it uses an non-adjustable lower support spike that makes adjustment of the angle to the vertical of a tree difficult if not impossible.
The complexity of these mechanisms and resulting high cost to manufacture and assemble the stands are detrimental to the use of such mechanisms. Therefore, what is needed is a stand that can be economically manufactured and assembled yet provides for easy installation of all types of trees and provides ease of adjustment of the tree angle, stability of the tree, stability of the tree angle, and an ample liquid reservoir to maintain the tree in prime condition.
The present invention is directed to an Christmas Tree that satisfies the above identified needs. The Christmas tree stand is constructed of molded plastic or equivalent organic polymeric materials and comprises a reservoir member, a base member, several clamping members and a spiked stabilizer disk.
The reservoir member provides a liquid tight volume for providing nourishment to the tree and includes an opening for receiving a trunk of a tree into the interior volume. The tree trunk is inserted into interior volume until it directly or indirectly engages a substantially centered stabilizer positioning dowel. The lower piston portion of the reservoir member is coaxially inserted into a centered cylinder portion associated with the base member. An upper flange portion of the reservoir includes a number of equally spaced slots for receiving therethrough an equal number of clamping members. When engaged with the reservoir member, the weight of the tree forces the reservoir member downward, causing a portion of this force to be transferred to the clamping members. The clamping members are thereby compressively driven against the tree trunk providing a clamping force sufficient to maintain the tree in a vertical position.
The base member includes the cylinder portion described above, an outer support portion having equally spaced pivot channels in angular alignment with the slots associated with the reservoir member. A rim is provided on the outer circumference of the base member for capturing incidental spills of liquids. A spring may be placed in the cylinder portion to provide a counterforce to the weight of the tree being supported by the reservoir member.
Each of the clamping members include a pivot end for being pivotally supported by the pivot channels included in the base member, a curvilinear end having a substantially vertical face which is used in clamping the tree trunk, an engagement notch for slideably locking the upper flange portion of the reservoir member into a clamped position, and an upper travel stop for limiting travel of said reservoir member in an upward direction during repositioning of the tree or when no tree is present in the stand.
The spiked stabilizer disk includes a top portion having one or more vertically standing spike for impaling the bottom of the tree trunk and a bottom portion having a plurality of indentations for adjustably coupling with the stabilizer positioning dowel installed at the bottom of the reservoir member. The plurality of indentations allows for repositioning of the tree to accommodate for misalignments of the tree trunk with respect to a vertical axis. In difficult installations, the stabilizer disk may be trimmed using scissors to further accommodate misalignments of said tree trunk.